Zingibar Officianalis
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| Monday, March 7th, 2011 | | 11:53 pm |
optimism and other things just out of reach
I try. I try. I try. The bright side is just too often the other side, the grass is always greener side, the dark side of the moon side. I try to believe in the future. It's just that things keep going wrong in the present. England at odds with foreigners. A bicycle chain clacking, slightly out of alignment. A slight nod the wrong way and everything's up in the air again. The pieces fall or fly trade winds carry the cohesion to another continent. Another year passes with a nod and what to show for it? Creases and lines; the geography of a face changes. Hold onto the moments before they dissolve from the heat of your hand. How can someone have MORE cancer at the age of 27? Wasn't once enough? Mutinous fucking cells. Too far away to do anything, as if anything could be done. | | Wednesday, January 19th, 2011 | | 10:57 am |
Summations
2010 was a long year. Years of upheaval often are. Last January all things were in the stages of planning. Nothing had panned out and everything was a distraction from the waiting. I couldn't have predicted the fiasco with my partnership visa being rejected 3 times, with getting way-laid by my flagged passport at the UK border en route to the US (silly me, thinking I could try to find a flat before moving to the place) and then finally, being granted the student visa laughably quickly. 2010 was a year of not knowing where my home was or even remembering what it means to be home. I spent the summer in Arlington and while I have no particular feelings for the city part of the place, I can still go down to the river and be at home, and for the first time since I left 10 years ago, can imagine a life where I compromise and be there to be near the people who are there. The further I go, the closer I get to my family. My mother and I no longer argue like we did when I was younger; I'll never know whether it's her or me growing up. My grandparents have become more and more important since I've realized how tenuous our time together may be. They are here and very much alive, and so I must appreciate this. My brother has become one of my favorite people without my noticing it. At some point I'd like to live close by and allow ourselves to become better friends. My dad is always there if I need him. That's comforting, somehow. I stumbled into Brighton with some preconceived notions of this beach town but mostly questions. It's been a long time since I've been in school and I haven't excelled in it for many, many years. There was definitely some nervousness about the academic side of things. In the last six months of living in Prague, the stress had definitely taken its toll on my relationship, so that was another concern. Aside from that, there is always some uncertainty about a new town. Would we make friends? Would we both be employed? How would we manage financially (now that our rent has nearly doubled)? Six months in I'm not tired of the sea. I don't think I'll ever tire of living by it, or glimpsing it down the street as I bike off to school or work or (especially) watching it's anger; seeing giant waves thrash the pedestrian walkway, throwing all the pebbles across the path, the horizon indistinguishable from the sky, the ocean brown and frothy. Six months in we're somewhat established; happy to be here, together, in our tiny little flat. School is proving to be a challenge, but not in the ways I expected. I'm happy with the academic aspect of it; it's the social aspect, the necessity of dealing with kids ten years younger and finding some common ground. But for me the social aspect is always a challenge. I think I was hoping for some kind of haven of queer-hippies and to some extent, that's not wrong. The people we've met are really not so different from the people we befriended in Prague, counting among them more expats than natives, more couples than singles, the growing extended family of the band...perhaps this is what the horizon will look like. I'd like to make resolutions for the new year. I'd like to continue my sourdough project and become a more confident bread-maker. In fact, I'd like to make my work placement about learning pastry and bread skills. This will make me a much stronger chef. I'd like to grow a little bit of time and money to enable some exploring of this fascinating country. I don't mind sticking to the South Coast for now, as long as we manage to get to Cornwall, and possibly to get across the Channel to France and the Netherlands before 2012 is done. I'd like to perform again, musically and record our songs. I'd like to be able to move to a less tiny flat (I can dream). I'd like to graduate (ok, that's 2012) and have the option to stay on for a bit. Oh yes, last but not least, I'd like to start writing again. | | Saturday, April 10th, 2010 | | 11:52 pm |
treetracks
This poem was just accepted into a local literary magazine, and I'm pretty pleased with it, so thought I'd share. It's for my friend Mike Brown, who unfortunately committed suicide last year. Treetracks Tracks like wings flying low over the countryside a forest grows through abandoned lines mocking “you lose you lose” our civilization will always return to that from which it came It was your birthday yesterday It would have been your birthday yesterday if not for the train of thought that crashed hard into you, knocking your breath into the trees It whooshes past me, rustling my hair, mussing the leaves and the memories click past, silent as wheels hovering over tracks, obscuring the view, branches etching themselves into eyes. Daylight drunk under a canopy of green, vibrating, my eyes swimming in their sockets I stay as still as it is possible to be when spinning to avoid any more of the bottles falling off the branches, crashing through me like a ghost on the tracks These rails need to be ridden because as soon as they lay dormant, the leaves break the soil “you lose you lose” the iron oxidizes and the bottles return to that from which they came | | Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | | 9:04 pm |
first National Geographic extract poem (words have not been rearranged)
Beautiful stranger the icy oddball gives rise to life, the planet and it's secrets spark outside mythology they discerned a sign and gleaned the frozen conditions of curiosity and anticipation bristling with gravity clouds crisp and exceeded in size only by 700 earths a day lasts less than it's exact rotation a window into the heart swirled into several times the mass of gas and grew into a magnetic field the core still stirs up vast weather systems rising from deep backlit by shifting patterns of shadows the thickness of a sheet of paper their subtle build up and interplay is minute rippling traffic, this dance is evidence moonlets spiral inward an unusual approach of icy bodies, trapped in the same rubble, sculpted by accident, cloaked in mysteries the puzzle tantalizing, dominated conversations moving by friction recording the distant lightning elegant in silver signals relayed and processed into images worshipful microphones followed, clustered around the void at close range liquid brewed or trapped, our atmosphere too cold for the spark of life | | Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | | 8:49 am |
and articulation
I'm thinking of starting a new blog, a food blog in particular, where I can basically run my mouth off on what's cooking (and eating) lately, recipes I've stolen and blundered or twisted into things delicious or unsightly, or things started and ended in my head. The motivation for this was a conversation at work the other day. After talking about beer for a half hour with my colleague and hearing him describe making it, I articulated properly my vision. "I don't want to start a 4-Michelin-starred restaurant. What I really want is a place where nearly everything is homemade, which offers normal people a chance to eat abnormally good food." It's so simple. Prague is eternally frustrating to me because there's no farmer's market, because the concept of bio hasn't yet extended to produce, because even though people do in some sense eat locally (honestly, if I scoff at buying Italian apples, I also forget that one can drive to Italy in about 7 hours), that in terms of food, and in terms of eating ethically, we're just a little behind the times here. No, I'm not complaining. Yes I can now buy tofu in the corner store. Yes the market for health food has grown visibly in the 4 years I've been here. It's just not exactly what I'm looking for (in so many ways). Related but slightly off-topic. I've had several dreams recently involving the Heidelburg Bakery (it makes sense as a physical and psychic marker, as it was my first job). The conversation I had with Wolfgang, the owner, the last time I visited was strangely inspiring. Maybe it was the fact that he feels qualified to give me advice or even bothered to, or the fact that in some ways he pursued and found success in some version of the American Dream, but I've decided that the Heidelburg is one place I'd like to do some sort of internship with, 4am starts be damned! There is definitely more brewing on this topic, but it's time for me to breakfast and head to work now. | | Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | | 5:42 pm |
The mountain of bullshit
I seem to have caused a fiasco at work. All I really did wrong was to leave early, which seeing that there were almost no kids and lots of teachers, should have been completely fine. Yes I suppose I should have checked with the boss, but honestly, it's not like they're actually at school more than a couple of hours a day. It's just the crushing reality that I've been in this job for three years without any kind of promotion or increased responsibilities (even though I work my ass off and do all kinds of extra shit like organizing planning meetings among my coworkers) and that they will never actually trust us do just do our jobs. I've had several arguments with one particular boss this year, primarily stemming from collective frustration amongst the teachers at the over-management/non-management which goes all the time. For example, every notice which is given to the parents in Czech should ideally be posted on the teacher's board in English. Ideally. We should ideally be briefed on what to do when a non-parent/stranger comes to collect a child (as this is a really serious safety issue) but all we get is, "just call us". It's always been a chaotic workplace, but having another location has only increased the lack of things we need/presence of bosses tenfold. Now when something we're looking for is not to be found, we can assume they've taken it to the new school. Obviously, when I sit down and talk to my bosses I'm going to merely apologize. I've really pissed Nikola off by "disrespecting" her and at this point I just need to make peace, but it's brought up a lot of shit in my head over this job as well as how I've changed. I've been making a serious effort this fall to stand up for myself, to be really direct with people and tell them what I think. (This is why I've gotten into three or four arguments with Nikola already.) For the most part, the results have been really positive. I've seen some changes implemented that needed to be. I've dealt with people in my life (not just at work) in a way that has lead to a higher level of mutual respect. I've averted a couple of situations that deal with passive-aggressivity (always a problem for me, particularly in relationships), and I managed to tell my bassist that I was completely ready and comfortable with him leaving the band and didn't particularly want to leave the door open for him to walk back in. On the other hand, the part of me that used to get violently angry at all the injustice in the world (not just in my world) seems to have laid down and taken a long nap. To some extent it's a necessary change. I can proofread a dissertation about Islamic human rights which tells me that homosexuality is a sin and how the only disagreement within the branches of Islam is how severe the punishment should be and not want to punch the person who wrote it. I can work in a blatantly sexist situation where the boys will always be favoured and understand that there is a huge amount of residual cultural sexism here. But now I'm riled. It won't solve anything to go in there blazing tomorrow. I was in the wrong, to some extent. This is not the time to bring up the other wrongs. But if I don't bring them up, where will they go? The calmer me is not calm to the core. It WILL come out. The mountain of injustice is getting hungrier. It will come out or it will eat me. Right now, there's too much at stake. | | Saturday, August 29th, 2009 | | 6:41 pm |
haunting
It's been an intense August. Traveling and living on the fly makes me a little uneasy, but then coming home feels so sweet. I've made it my goal to try out many new home-y things this fall; baking different types of bread, sprouting seeds and grains, transcribing my recipes. It's not that I've stopped writing over the past couple of years, but more that I've been focused on living and constantly adjusting to a new and strange environment. If it's possible to spend three years processing (and I can't begin to describe the internal changes that moving alone to a new country provoke) and then vomit the results onto the page, it looks like that is the direction it's heading in. I'm excited to be more settled. I think the words need to come now. Last week I learned that an old friend committed suicide. It's a mystery to me. I can't pretend that I've never had passing thoughts of it myself, but to actually carry it out. It's so pathetic, yet so selfish. I'm not close to this man; haven't been for years, but it still hurts to know that he had gotten to the point where that was the only viable option. It's a very different feeling than when I learned Frank had been shot. That was brutal, violent, infuriating. It was easy to take the unfairness of the situation; the sheer dumb irony of one of the most gentle people on the planet being killed in such a manner and find fuel in the rage. The only time in my life I made it to the top of Negley Avenue hill on my bicycle was the night of his wake. I couldn't drink the feeling away, so I went to the place it had happened and beat up the pavement for awhile. But this is different. I'm not in a place to know what happened. I'm literally too far away to have been there. I know that this was a troubled man, who for many years engaged in self-destructive behavior. So I'm not surprised. Only shocked. | | Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | | 9:40 pm |
| | Monday, August 10th, 2009 | | 7:30 am |
more mornings
I seem to be somewhat loquacious when I'm having these bouts of morning insomnia. I must admit I've been fretting a bit about going to the UK. It's hard to be at ease someplace when you're worried about whether you'll be any more than an inconvenience. I never really thought I'd have it in me to take crap for someone else, but Katie's not going to go home without me, and we're not going to see her mother for any longer than absolutely necessary, and definitely not going to stay with the parents for more than two days, and it's actually important for her to see the rest of her family. Dreaming last about my dad visiting. I owned a car, but had rented it out for the duration of the visit. We were coming back into town after a day's outing, and were waiting at the tram stop when there was suddenly a power outage. There was no moon or ambient light, so the city was thrown into inscrutable, soupy blackness. panicked slightly, and clutched by some vertigo, clung to the nearest car as we attempted to walk up the nearest hill towards home. While doing this, I decided to send a text message to the person who'd rented my car, asking for it back. I quickly got a response, which read, in perfectly imperfect English "YOU SAID YOU COME BACK IN FEB. CAR HAS BIKE RACK." Woke up with my rolling bedside table somewhere around my knees. and that was at 6:00. Good morning. | | Monday, August 3rd, 2009 | | 10:40 pm |
Zombie Sinuses
I have the sinus infection of the living dead. Second time since June, and it feels like both sinuses are infected. It's finally turned into summer here, the rain clearing for a matter of days, not hours, and I'd love to frolic in the sunshine. However, I don't feel very much like frolicking. The Czechs have some stigma about going out in the sun with a sinus infection. Never heard of it before, but it's making me extra paranoid. I feel like running around with a black umbrella and jumping from shadow to shadow. Surely another round of antibiotics will do the trick, but I'd love to be able to avoid putting those kinds of drugs in my body. | | Saturday, July 11th, 2009 | | 9:16 am |
morning rant
It's too early for me to be up today, but lying in bed not sleeping just makes all my jumbled worries worse, so I'm up. Then again, it's not all that early. The garbage men are out. Lately I've been more socially awkward than usual. It's difficult to explain. At this point, in this city, I'm just in between everything. Too dorky to be cool, too shy to be a social butterfly, too social to be a homebody, too american to be european, too weird to be normal and on and on and yet somehow not enough invested in the things I want to do and care about to be oblivious to the lot. Somehow I've been existing at this static, semi-public level, working to exhaustion, not finding the time or energy to write or play music as much as would satisfy this hunger. When I left, I felt like I honestly did "want to eat everything in the world" and now, maybe it's just the processing of growing, of sorting and finding and throwing away the excess, but the hunger has sort of faded to vague curiosity. I'm still not sure about cooking school. I'm sure I want to create as my means to live, and this has consistently been a means to do so, but I worry that I'm not competitive or hungry enough to thrive in a ruthless, demanding profession. Maybe it's the idea of a profession that is more scary than the actuality of it. The premeditation of going to school in a year, of knowing approximately where I'll be three years in the future, of having this decision narrow out the other options and point the direction and actually be one step in achieving the larger goal of starting my own place is actually terrifying. Obviously much of the worry is due to not having enough time, an ever-present crutch of mine. Depressed/troubled mind? Just work more. Uncertainty about the future? If you work, you won't have to deal with it now. Dissatisfaction with the present state? The more you work, the less you think, the faster the future will come. | | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 4:44 pm |
no news is good news
Still don't know about next year, but had a lovely holiday in Croatia. Have started new blog to record travels. stripwis.blogspot.com | | Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | | 3:13 pm |
the next adventure?
I've been trying to put it into words for a letter, this feeling. It's as if the city knows I'm leaving, and wants me to change my mind. All these things that have been unsettled for the last year are calming, and I'm able to look through the gray gray skies and be optimistic. It makes me a little anticipatorily wistful, as well, because I know I'll miss this place like hell when I do leave. But leaving it must be. I can't keep putting off doing what I need to do, denying what is obvious, trying all the flavors before settling on one. But then, in a sense, isn't that what I'm doing? Going off to another place to start again, make new connections and get lost in yet another language. If I do end up in the UK (should know by my birthday) it will be another language, another round of visas, another fresh start, though thankfully not alone. And if not? Well that thought isn't really allowed. I'm being careful not to bank on the school thing actually happening. I still need to hear back from two more, and if KT doesn't get the job at the one I've been accepted to, we can't go. It would be foolish to move to the middle of nowhere on uncertain terms. So all I know is that I don't know. And the waiting. The waiting is agonizing. But I've been distracting myself in other ways. We've started playing shows again, and I'm planning several for the spring (actually we've been invited to play a few). Been working on new friends (yes I realize it's stupid to branch out when you have 5 months left). That's part of the feeling. All this isolation I've been feeling is suddenly clearing a bit. Meeting new people, making better connections with people I already know is just necessary. I'd like to have this place to come back to, as a tourist into these people's lives, especially if I'm going to be on the same continent, and I'd like to not feel like living here is an impossibility, which is how (I'm sorry) I still feel about Pittsburgh, that this place has been a positive experience and I needn't leave forever. | | Saturday, December 27th, 2008 | | 5:27 pm |
New Year and Old
This year has been a bit of a mixed bag. Some good things; moving in with KT, visiting the States in the summer, getting an Ism demo finished, filling in my knowledge of Czech (or at least my confidence) most importantly, deciding to move on from Prague. Together. Some bad things, too, like the general cynicism and isolation that have permeated much of the past 6 months, feeling too small in a small circle of expats, perpetually wanting more, living with reconstruction, my old co-workers being not really worth the effort (though the new ones are wholly better) and the ease with which I slip into the 'us' while probably forgetting the 'me', and losing contact with the old friends for no good reason. Next year I've decided that there are basically two really important decisions I need to make; school, and what/where/when/how to do it, and music; what does it mean to me, how can I take it in a better and more sustainable direction, make it more of a creation and less of a headache, which is what it's been feeling like lately. | | Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 | | 2:58 pm |
No particular reason
Just that I haven't written anything here in a few months, and lately have been feeling a little cut off from my Pittsburgh friends, who are as important as ever. Maybe the more places you go the more important it is to just have sacred those places you've left. Now, partially en route to the next destination, I wonder what of Prague I'll keep. Don't worry, settling down is in the plan. But not yet. Not yet. It'll be twice as hard to go anywhere or do anything once this monster of a plan of the restaurant in my head gets born. So consider this getting it out of my system. It's surprisingly quiet today. I'm determined to make the most of my free time and just be alone at home for a couple of hours before teaching again. It's become clear that I need this time weekly. Even if I'm not pressuring myself to practice (though I'd like to), that free time is a worthy pursuit in and of itself. But that's all for now. The new song needs work. | | Sunday, September 21st, 2008 | | 6:21 pm |
lazy sunday
it's grayish outside; wintry. we're holed up with a pot of soup making on the stove and wrapped in our pajamas because there's no heat yet, and the workmen have taken an entire wall off of the hallway. have i mentioned that we wake up every morning bar sunday at 7.30 am to the sound of jackhammers? it's extremely relaxing. but the soup, chickeny and seaweedy and full of all the goodness homemade broth is full of, is warding off the colds which inevitably arrive with the change of season. tuesday i fly to london, 5.30 am to spend the hours waiting for the czech embassy to accept my visa and finally be allowed to stay here, before leaving to arrive back in prague at midnight. it's ironic, because we're talking about the next step already. after two years, i've got the kind of visa i can easily renew, and the kind of job they'd prefer i stay at, and all i want to do is move on. we're talking about argentina. i miss cooking, and i still want to open that restaurant. kt can teach english in south america as easily as she can here, and if i enter into a cooking program, i can kill two birds with one stone; getting an education in management (which is my weak point in the kitchen) and do it in spanish which will require the language. i know it's possible to get to a level in something where it's functional, useful, but i think it will help to have an endpoint, a tangible goal to force the process. | | Thursday, August 21st, 2008 | | 9:17 am |
potatoes
I just read this article about potatoes, and how they could potentially feed the world, but how scared all the farmers and scientists are about another potato blight (actually the new, hardier, more chemically-resistant version of the famous Irish/European one which struck in 1845). Instead of exploiting the fact that there are multitudinous varieties of potatoes available, which could be planted and perhaps bred to be hardier/more disease-resistant, the farmers are spraying more and more fungicides and the scientists are trying to genetically engineer potatoes to be more uniform, disease-resistant, and similar enough in size to fit all of the commercial machinery. What is wrong with this world? | | Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | | 7:08 pm |
embarrassing admittance
we have been watching the L Word. it's trash, basically soap opera with lesbians, but i worry. is this merely a result of too much time, or is this a signifier of my life going down the drain? i haven't been writing much this year. it has to get quiet in my head. i had to let the narrative voice i was stuck in die off. the songs are coming. the poetry, absolutely not. maybe i'm waiting for to be able to write prose. maybe i don't have anything left to say. | | Monday, August 18th, 2008 | | 5:18 pm |
| | Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | | 7:20 pm |
things i miss
it was a good trip. nearly everyone was seen, and most everyone was responsive and enthusiastic about entertaining needlessly busy and overwhelmed girls. thanks for that. i was just thinking about the things which i appreciate about america. such as customer service. and international cuisine. and massive amounts of farmers markets and organic food. and driving everywhere. no, wait, that's another list. but to maintain the positive, what goes without saying is all the family (friends too) that ultimately will keep me coming back, no matter where i stray. but it is reassuring to hear czech. it does feel like home here. and despite the dust and work going on in and around our building, it feels like a little comfort zone in the flat. i'm sure we'll create a new home when we leave, but we've not left yet, as much as i may talk about "the next" (place, move, step etc). and in a way, just going along in a tram, or picking up half our groceries from the fruit shop, the bakery, the pharmacy, as opposed to going to one giant place for everything is also good to get back to. my mother makes a serious effort to do just this, but the general attitude of americans is to find convenience, to cut corners, to make the trip in a car, to buy bulk and save, to find the path of least resistance. the attitude is pervasive. i come back here and want to buy things; i want to continue on this comfortable vacation lifestyle; i don't want to get back to the daily grind. thankfully its only the 7th of august and i don't really have to. but...i have to do the other work, the practicing and writing new songs, setting up shows, making plans!, researching this oft-discussed next move, get to know our new neighborhood and its shortcuts and little shops, its personality. that's all for now. just appreciating being home, and appreciating having left. |
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